The Danger of Missing Small Details
by Erisah Mae
Summary: Eggsy wasn't born with a silver spoon. He got something better. The rest of Kingsman take a while to catch on. Or: the one in which Eggsy is a god, Harry has some explaining to do, and Roxy and Merlin desperately need a scotch.
1. Chapter 1

The thing that both Merlin and Harry noticed, but never put much thought into, was that Eggsy didn't really take after his father Lee all that much. He had his father's bravery, and clear sense of unflinching loyalty, (albeit offered a little more warily, but that could be put down to the obvious trauma of having that unmitigated arsehole for a stepfather and growing up in the rough as he had since Lee's death,) and that was good enough for the both of them.

In retrospect, Merlin considered with more than a little dismay as he re-watched the footage taken from Lancelot's glasses, they perhaps should have been paying a bit more attention.

But then, maybe it was a mistake that could be forgiven, because it wasn't exactly a natural or normal progression of logic to assume that a boy would be the last to test his parachute or stay firm in refusing to spill his guts despite the fact that a fucking train was going to run through them _because going splat would be a temporary inconvenience for him_.

A knock came at the door, and Merlin turned slowly to see Eggsy standing on the slightly worn green carpet of Merlin's office looking decidedly sheepish.

Merlin, still sitting in his wing-backed leather office chair, just stared at him.

Eggsy cringed a little.

There was a brief silence.

Merlin continued to just stare at him.

Inevitably, Eggsy broke it when he started babbling.

"Well it ain't like something I really wanted to get around, you know? Mum's the only other person alive who knew about it, though most people back on the block knew I weren't Lee Unwin's kid except in the sense he 'alf-raised me, they never really asked questions like. She was already preggers with me when they met, so I guess they just assumed the previous boyfriend was a bit of a deadbeat." He paused to grin a little crookedly. "Seeing as I ain't seen hide nor shiny hair of the bastard for years at a time I 'spose they weren't super wrong, though he has always given the best birthday presents. Not Christmas though, since he don't hold with worshipping other pantheons."

The thing was, Merlin groaned internally, maybe he should have seen this coming.

"I have footage here of you from Lancelot's glasses," Merlin stated.

Eggsy nodded. "Yeah, I was afraid of that. I knew either way from her reaction that Rox weren't going to be able to keep 'er mouth shut on this one."

"Well to be fair," Merlin said, tipping his head to one side, "she did see you get hit by submachine gun fire that practically cut you in half, and then proceed to _walk it off_."

Eggsy shrugged and grinned innocently. "Well, I did tell youse I might not come with a silver spoon shoved up me arse, but I had more'na bit to offer Kingsman."

Merlin ignored that in favour of stating, "You then proceeded to walk up to the Mafia woman who shot you, and told her that you had this itching sensation in your kidneys, could she be a mate and _scratch it._ " Merlin wondered if he sounded hysterical. He certainly felt a little hysterical.

Eggsy shrugged again. "Well, it were a psychological ploy, now, weren't it. It worked a treat too, shoulda seen the look on 'er face- oh wait, you woulda from the glasses."

"Indeed," replied Merlin. And admittedly, were the circumstances a little different, the look of abject shock on one of the most deadly enforcers for the London branch of the mafia would have been hilarious. (Come to think of it, now that Merlin was in on the joke, maybe it would be in retrospect, although he supposed the very expensive therapy bill that Lancelot had threatened to send him would wipe any smile off his face.)

Merlin paused for a moment, before saying a little plaintively, "I don't suppose you could have mentioned this whole basically immortal thing a little earlier?"

Eggsy smirked, shaking his head. "Nah. It's against the rules. I'm 'sposed to be spending a human lifespan formin' attachments and learnin' shit like what pain and disrespect feels like so I don't turn into an utter cunt when I inherit the full powerset." His expression turned contemplative. "Not that that always helps, but that's the theory anyway." He shrugged. "'Sides, when people figure it out they go all weird like."

"I cannot imagine why," Merlin said, resisting the urge to bury his hands in his face and hyperventilate at the thought of a chaos vector like Gary "Eggsy" "Galahad" Unwin inheriting a full set of divine powers.

"I am sorry about 'Arry though," continued Eggsy, suddenly turning serious. "I'm not able or allowed to interfere with death. Would piss Uncle Pluto off something chronic," (Merlin nearly choked on nothing at _Uncle Pluto_ , though Eggsy if he noticed kindly pretended not to,) "which I might 'ave risked if I thought there was even the slightest joke of a chance I could pull it off rather than bringin' back a zombie, and part of this whole human lifespan thing is suffering grief and loss just like the rest of humans, no divine cheating allowed," he explained morosely, head hanging.

Merlin nodded gravely. He had heard that that was the case with fledgling gods, but he was glad Eggsy had confirmed it. It would have been disappointing to say the least to learn that one of his favourite agents was the sort to only pretend to grieve with Merlin over one of his oldest friends.

(Now that he knew that Eggsy is basically immortal, Merlin is sure, in that dark corner of his mind that he usually saves for dealing with the very worst nemeses that had Eggsy simply let Harry die out of neglect and then proceeded to lie to him, well then…

Merlin might have felt justified in testing the limits of that immortality at great length.)

"So who is he? Your biological father," Merlin clarified when Eggsy looked mildly confused.

Eggsy grinned brightly.

"What, the shoes weren't a tipoff?"

Realisation dawned.

"Hermes?"

Eggsy nodded, correcting, "'E prefers Mercury, since 'herm' brings to mind a bunch of sculptures ostensibly in his honour that consist of head, pillar instead of body, and cock." Eggsy grinned. "Some of the others _still_ give him shit over that, but considering the sheer number of half-sibs I got runnin' around, them Ancient Greeks might 'ave 'ad a point."

Dear Gods, Goddesses and all the little fishes, Merlin thought, a little dazed as he took in the blonde godling lounging in the doorway of his office.

The idea that there might be similar people to Eggsy running about was more than a little daunting.

Eggsy frowned suddenly.

"You ain't goin' to kick me out, are you? I mean, I know I lied and all, even though twas by omission, but I'm not sposed to tell people, and this Kingsman gig is the most fun I've 'ad all me life," he threw Merlin a pair of puppy eyes that he must have learned from that ridiculous pug of his. "I really am sorry I gave you all a bit of a turn, but I ain't sorry you know now."

Merlin stared (he was doing a lot of that today), and slowly shook his head.

"I'm sure we at Kingsman can find _some_ use for another agent who can shrug off bullet wounds," Merlin said dryly. (He hoped that Eggsy would eventually forgive him.)

Eggsy grinned, cheered raucously, punching the air, and then paused.

"Wait, _another_ agent?"

"Hello Eggsy."

Eggsy practically levitated as the man who had stepped up behind him revealed his presence.

He spun in place, hands thrown up defensively in reflex, but when he saw the speaker, with his crisp suit, greying hair and tired eyes, he dropped them simultaneously with his jaw.

"Holy fuck."

Harry Hart shrugged elegantly. "That _is_ what brought us both to this situation," he quipped.

Seeing the rush of emotions that fought to stay on Eggsy's face, Merlin was grateful to see that the one that lingered was disbelieving glee.

(It seemed that he might be forgiven after all.)

The two of them stepped into the office, and sat down on the couch Merlin kept for when he wanted a quick afternoon nap, and just stared at each other, marvelling at each other's existence.

Having a suspicion as to where this might be going, Merlin quietly strode out of his office, and shut the door behind him to give them both some privacy for whatever noisy emotional reaction was about to ensue.

In the corridor, he spotted a shell-shocked looking Roxy staring at the now closed door.

"Tell me that I'm not the only human in Kingsman," Roxy breathed after a moment, still staring at the closed door.

Merlin shook his head. "As far as I'm aware, it's just those two who are not."

Roxy shuddered. "Pantheons help us. But at least they're on our side."

"Indeed."

Merlin offered his arm and she took it automatically.

"Scotch?"

"…there's a bottle of 12 year old hidden in the third cabinet in the sitting room."

"I know, I put it there."

"Let's put a dent in it, shall we?"

"Indeed."

And if the two of them were visibly nursing hangovers the next morning, well, Harry and Eggsy knew better than to comment.

...

 _A/N: not 100% happy with the ending, but I got all the jokes I wanted in this in this, so eh._


	2. Chapter 2

Harry Hart was, in Merlin's opinion, a complete and utter menace who existed purely to raise one's blood pressure.

Oh sure, on first impression he was all suave manners, well-cut bespoke suits and amazing taste in scotch, but that impression only lasted until Harry decided to relax a little, or more to the point, seek out a little relaxation.

"Galahad, what are you doing?" Merlin demanded as he watched on his monitor as Harry strode up to where one of the burlier yakuza was harassing one of the bartenders in the dingy Osaka cocktail bar.

Merlin gritted his teeth. Harry was supposed to be waiting for their contact, and keeping a low profile.

"Our contact is late, I'm bored, and that young lady mixes a most excellent martini," Harry muttered under his breath. "And more to the point, the manners of that lout offend me, so I am going to teach him a lesson."

"Galahad," Merlin hissed, "has the definition of 'low profile' changed in the last ten minutes, or have you just completely lost your senses?"

Merlin watched helplessly on the monitor as Harry looked directly into one of the security feeds that Merlin had tapped and winks.

"Oh stop fretting old boy," Harry replied. "As if having a westerner in a place like this was ever going to be subtle."

And whilst Merlin privately had to admit that Harry might have a point there, there was standing out because you were the only foreigner in a Japanese bar, and then there was standing out because you had decided to start a bar fight with armed thugs because you were bored and upset with their manners.

"Harry, if you don't stop right this minute I'll…" and then Merlin trailed off, because Harry had thrown a sake bottle at the thug's head, and it was officially far too late.

Merlin braced himself for what he would have assumed to be the inevitable ultraviolence following.

What neither he nor Harry were expecting was to see the harassed waitress shoot out a hand and catch the sake bottle.

Completely ignoring the thug who had previously been menacing her, the bartender rounded on Harry and admonished in perfect (albeit American accented) English, "Do not waste sake!"

Harry's glasses feed stopped getting closer to the woman as he paused.

"My apologies madam, but I was simply-"

"It was a nice thought, but I assure you that I have got this," the woman responded, and Merlin was surprised to note that she seemed suddenly a great deal older than he had previously assumed.

She turned back to the thug, smiled coldly and professionally, and then switching back to Japanese, sweetly offered the thug a different drink if he did not like how she had mixed his first.

The thug took the offered shot, knocked it back, smiled, and then hit the floor.

No one in the bar reacted, other than a few of the regulars rolling their eyes, the conversations that had paused quickly returning to normal.

The bartender turned to Harry.

"Now, if you would like to offer useful assistance, you can help me take this idiot out back."

The glasses feed dipped as Harry nodded.

"This is a terrible idea," Merlin told him as he bent down to throw the body of the yakuza over one shoulder.

"Indubitably," Harry responded under his breath, but he kept on doing what he was doing anyway.

They stepped through the garishly painted back door, and out into the alleyway where the bins were kept. The bartender gestured for Harry to drop the yakuza next to them, on a mattress that looked like it had seen better days, and several years of the elements.

"I will not have anyone saying that we do not offer our clientele appropriate hospitality," the bartender said with a small smirk, her dark eyes shining with mischief.

"Indeed, madam," Harry said, executing a light bow.

"What's your name?" she asked him, once the Yakuza had been deposited.

"Galahad," he responded.

The bartender cocked her head at him. "Liar," she stated without rancour. "You must be a scion of one of the less civilised ones then."

Harry blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

The bartender's brows pulled together. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's basic manners to give forewarning before stepping into another's territory… oh!" she exclaimed upon seeing Harry's blank expression. "My mistake, it's just that you were tapping right into your divinity just then, and so I thought you were older than you are." She smiled, and it was a smile that Merlin had seen previously on the face of doting aunts when they have seen their nephews do something unexpectedly clever, like putting together his own computer. "You have remarkable control for someone still in his human lifespan."

There was a long pause.

"My… what?" Harry asked in a straightforwardly baffled tone that echoed what Merlin was feeling just then.

"Oh!" said the bartender, clapping her hands together. "You mean I'm the first one to tell you! How exciting! I've always wanted to be someone's first! Though honestly, your… sire? It's usually the sire, especially since us goddesses aren't nearly so careless with our children as most of the older gods seem to be. I mean, it is a bit of a cliché to impregnate a woman and then leave her and the child to their own devices, (and honestly a lot of the children might even be better off growing up mostly human,) but it's downright sad how few of the gods seem to know how to be responsible fathers. I'd blame Zeus for being a terrible influence, but honestly, most of them are little better... though I suppose he and his children are some of the flashiest," she grumbles. "Indiscreet, the whole Greek pantheon is. At least when Indra fathered a little demigod it was because Kunti downright begged him since her husband was cursed, rather than sneaking into the bedrooms of princesses just to show that he could."

Oh. Merlin froze. He had heard of demigods. They did tend to pop up from time to time - there was a self-proclaimed daughter of Cupid currently running a very popular reality TV dating show (Cupid either didn't care or wasn't offended enough to make his own comment about that, so people were left to make their own deductions as to the veracity of that), and there was an incredibly tricky Congolese mercenary and master thief rumoured to be a son of Anansy- though for the most part they tried to go under the radar. Demigods were rather problematic for both science and religion, so many people tried to pretend that they didn't actually exist, but it was less that Merlin did not believe in them, and more that he had never suspected that he personally would run into the two or three in a billion that tended to crop up every generation.

But if he was understanding right…

Harry, he remembered rather faintly, was an orphan, and had been since he was twelve years old, when a hunting accident had killed his father, and his mother had committed suicide soon after. He had mentioned, one time when exceedingly drunk, that he had always thought his parents to be rather cold to one another, his father in particular, and so it had surprised him that his mother had chosen to follow the man in that fashion.

(The fact that it had clearly devastated Harry was unspoken, but obvious. Merlin had more tact, not to mention sense than to ask if this was had anything to do with how easily Harry shunted his emotions aside when he needed to complete a mission, and how poorly he formed attachments.)

If his father had been some random god though…

That would explain a lot.

Especially if they weren't talking about some god of peace and meadows but rather what Merlin was quickly coming to suspect would be a god who would wholeheartedly approve of Harry's choice of occupation.

Harry though, did not appear to agree with him. "I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about."

The bartender shook her head sadly. "I can see that. I'll send a call out to… the UK? That is where you are from?" Harry nodded. "Yes. I'll send a call out to the UK and make sure that someone from your father's pantheon takes some time to explain things to you. This really is most careless of them, but what can you expect from a bunch who used to accept human sacrifices."

Harry shook his head in confusion, making the glasses feed swing oddly from side to side.

"Who are you?" he asked, sounding rather lost.

"Oh!" the bartender blushed a little. "How very rude of me." She bowed. "I am called Kushinadahime, and I am the wife of Susanō no Mikoto." She smiled. "This little bar of mine is just something to keep me entertained."

Merlin, unfamiliar with Japanese mythology, speedily used a search engine, and informed Harry, "if she is who she says she is, then she is thousands of years old, and her husband, who is a god of storms, used her family sake to get a snake demon drunk so that he could cut off all of its heads."

"…well I have seen that your sake is potent stuff," Harry responded to Kushinadahime.

Kushinadahime smirked. "Old family recipe," she responded. "And you can tell the man whispering in your ear not to fret, but the next part of this conversation is not for human ears."

And then Merlin's monitors went black.

Two days later, after Merlin had been forced to organise Agravaine to go and see what had happened to the contact, (only to find that she had been murdered by the yakuza, a revelation that came only after Agravaine had managed to start a minor gang war that spread from Osaka to Nara, and Merlin was reminded once again that Galahad was not the only pain in his arse,) Harry called him from a payphone at the Sydney International airport.

Merlin reacted with what he thought was remarkable restraint considering how worried he had been.

"Galahad, what the actual fuck."

"Not so loud," Harry groaned.

"Are you… Harold Christopher Hart are you hungover!?" Merlin demanded.

"Kushi invited me to a family get together. Her family have been sake brewers since before written records. Of course I'm bloody hungover!" Harry groused.

Merlin buried his face in his hands. "I cannot believe you."

"Well it wasn't as though she gave me a ch-!"

"No," Merlin interrupted, "shut up, I am not in the mood." He quickly made a few clicks with his keyboard, and told Harry that he had a ticket for the next flight to Heathrow.

"Thank you Merlin." Harry paused. "I don't suppose the mission…?"

"After you went AWOL, I sent Agravaine in to deal with it," Merlin said viciously.

Harry groaned again for reasons that had little to do with his hangover, and a lot to do with the diplomatic skills that Agravaine rather infamously did not posess. (If there had been literally any other agent available, then Merlin would have sent them instead).

"Is Osaka still standing?"

"Barely, although I suspect that Agravaine is never going to be able to get back into the country without a false passport and either plastic surgery or significant prostheses, because the Japanese are Not Amused." Merlin sighed. "The mission was a cock-up from the start though, so really, it was neither of your faults that it all went pear-shaped, unplanned kidnapping by goddesses and discovery of probable god-bastard-child-hood aside."

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.

"Sorry," Merlin apologised. "That was uncalled for."

"No, no," Harry demurred. "A succinct description of the circumstances. Though it does explain a few things," he added thoughtfully.

"Rio di Janeiro?" Merlin asked, referencing a particularly harrowing mission in which Harry had somehow managed to survive being buried alive when a building collapsed with him inside it.

"And Phnom Penh. And Sofia. And Budapest," Harry admitted.

"Budapest?" Merlin questioned. "What the hell happened in Budapest? I never heard anything about that one." And he most certainly should have. As Chief Handler he had read all of the past files on Harry's missions, and written several more.

"Remember when I went on holiday a few years back? You had only just joined."

"Oh." Merlin considered. "I do recall Bors remarking that you seemed unusually refreshed when you came back," he hazarded.

"That's one way of putting it," Harry responded.

Merlin decided that he didn't want to know. What he didn't know wouldn't make him feel the need to wring Harry's apparently immortal neck. (Which did mean that at least he probably wouldn't be able to kill the man, but nonetheless it was not a healthy coping mechanism to choke out colleagues when they were stupid, and it was a habit that Merlin had no particular desire to get into.)

There was another pause.

"So does this mean that you're going to be giving me less shit when I take necessary risks?" Harry wondered.

Merlin looked involuntarily at the side cupboard where he had been hoarding a bottle of Glenfiddich his sister had bought him for his past birthday.

"Don't you dare," Merlin hissed. "We already have a hard enough time with some of the other agents trying to copy you! The last thing I need is you being even more reckless and egging them on!"

"Fine," said Harry, his tone sounding a little disappointed, before hanging up.

A little over a decade later, Merlin watched through Lancelot's glasses feed as the new Galahad stood up and grinned despite having been eviscerated by bullets mere moments before.

Oh hells.

Not another one.

"Fuck. That's it. No more Galahads. I'm putting my foot down. The name is getting fucking retired after this," Merlin swore.

"W-what?!" Lancelot sounded as though she might be going into shock.

Oh shit.

"Roxy, keep it together. You can have an extended freak out later, but right now, you're in a building full of mafia, and you do not have time to go into shock," Merlin commanded firmly.

His respect for Roxy grew significantly as she took in a long, shuddering breath, and then proceeded to exfiltrate herself and Eggsy in record time. Eggsy won a few points by the way he managed to mostly talk her down afterwards, when they were both safe.

His agents safe, Merlin turned to glare at Harry, who was sitting leaning over Merlin's shoulder.

By the way that Harry's expression had gone entirely inscrutable, Merlin inducted that Harry had not, in fact known about this. That made him feel a little better.

Then Harry suddenly grinned, and Merlin felt his heart sink.

"You two are going to be a right pain in my arse, aren't you," Merlin stated flatly.

Harry's grin didn't dim.

Merlin glowered.

"Get the fuck out of my office."

Harry got up, and wandered off. He was whistling.

Merlin groaned.

Well at least when Eggsy tried to kill Harry all over again for lying to him, the both of them could go all out without killing each other.

Merlin calmly booked himself a long holiday on a remote tropical island, and then settled back to wait for his agents to come home.

...

 _Notes:_

 _1\. The human sacrifices thing in Celtic religion is actually hotly debated. Whilst the Romans (including Julius Caesar) left written records saying they found such things, many historians consider this to be propaganda, and suggest that the archaeological evidence doesn't support this. I'm not an expert in this area, so don't take my word for it._

 _2\. I made a decision about who Harry's father is! Arawn: Celtic (Welsh) God of the underworld, terror, revenge, and war. The revelation didn't really fit in the text of this, but yeah. Seemed apt._

 _3\. This was a lot angstier than Eggsy's story, but really, considering who I had to work with, is anyone here surprised?_

 _4\. I put in Kushinadahime because spy movies are almost always about male fantasies. Nothing wrong with that, but she's basically acting out something I wish I'd see happen with female characters in a lot more spy movies- not being a victim, or the bad guy._

 _5\. And yes, that was an Avengers reference._


	3. Chapter 3

There were times when Roxy loved her job as Lancelot.

This was not one of those times.

She stood in a warehouse that was a dark fetid oven, that stank of sweat, gun oil and upset animals.

To her left, there was a rickety table covered in weapons.

To her right, there was a rather emaciated-looking hyena chained to the wall.

Surrounded by a gang of blackmarket arms dealers, Roxy stood, outwardly erect and calm.

Inwardly, she was screaming foul epithets.

This mission had been fucked from the start, and had only gotten worse.

For one thing, she spoke very little Afrikaans. She could understand important words and phrases, like "yes", "no", the numbers 1-10, greetings, "shoot them", "kill them all", "spy", "traitor" and enough to know if they were trying to insult her to her face.

(Fortunately Merlin had an underling (code-named "Viviane") who was fluent, and so she was translating as much as she could into subtitles that ran across Roxy's glasses. There was however, a slight delay, so Roxy could not always rely on the translation to get her through tough spots.)

Then there was the climate. It was mid-February, it had reached 32 degrees celcius, humidity was at 71% and she was wearing a bullet-proof suit. The turn of phrase "sweating bullets" had never felt so apt.

Then there was the fact that Eggsy had been supposed to rendezvous with her twelve hours ago, but had for some reason dropped off the grid. Last she had heard, Merlin's team had been still searching for him, but apparently his captors either had anti-tracking tech that was good enough to disable Merlin's trackers (unlikely) or they had dropped him down some deep hole in the ground where there was no reception (probable, and Harry was going to go fucking ballistic if they had done something like bury Eggsy alive). So instead of having a fairly reliable partner to support her, she had been forced to make contact with the arms dealers solo.

And now, to put the cheap glace cherry on the shit sandwich was the fact that the group she was trying to infiltrate had decided that she needed to be tested, to see if she was a serious customer.

Apparently, their definition of "serious customer" was "one who is willing to test out the merchandise by shooting a person dead".

So here she was, sweat dripping down her back, standing in a darkened Johannesburg warehouse with poor lighting, surrounded by goons, being told that unless she shot the poor sod they were about to bring out to her, then there would be no deal.

And since "no deal" meant that the irradiated banknotes full of trackers would not end up in their hands, and the evidence that they had access to weapons from a particular old KGB stockpile would not be acquired, that would be mission failed.

(There was also the part where they would probably shoot Roxy, but she was at least 80% certain she would be able to avoid a headshot. Everything else was survivable (Kingsman Suits: Look Put Together Whilst Being Kept in One Piece)).

Roxy was officially not impressed with this shit.

The next time she saw Eggsy, she and him were going to have _words_ about him not being here to back her up.

There was a bang on one of the side doors, and then it was opened. Two arms dealers dragged a half-dressed man with a bag over his head into the centre of the room, and deposited him on the ground, hard.

Their ring-leader, a beefy white Afrikaaner with a shaved head and bullet earrings, smirked at her.

"So, girly. You want to do business with us? Shoot him."

Roxy considered her options.

None of them were good.

"Pull the bag off his head," she said. "I want him to know who is sending him to hell."

In her ear, she could hear Viviane muttering as she prepared to do the world's fastest facial identification exercise.

This turned out to be unnecessary, as the bound man was revealed to be Eggsy.

Roxy smiled.

"Oh hello there," she said.

(In her ear, Viviane swore. "Roxy, if you're about do what I think you're about to do, then the other Galahad is going to _kill_ you.")

Eggsy looked up, glasses hanging slightly askew, but miraculously intact.

He saw her expression, and cringed.

"Oh fuck me," he muttered.

The arms dealers looked perturbed.

"You know this fucker?" a particularly hairy one dressed in army surplus demanded.

Roxy nodded, still smiling.

"Aw c'mon Rox…" Eggsy whined. "Please don't shoot me…"

"Fucker failed to tell me the truth," Roxy said bluntly, snagging a shot-gun from the table.

She looked Eggsy in the eye and then loaded it with buckshot.

Eggsy whimpered.

"Lance? No! Please Lance!" he begged. "I'm sorry! I should have told you!"

Roxy turned and pulled the trigger, reloaded and pulled the trigger again, and turned his torso into so much hamburger meat.

Eggsy collapsed.

The armsdealers blinked.

"W-what should he have told you?" he asked, as Roxy walked over to Eggsy's prone form, nudging him a little with her foot, ostensibly checking if he was dead.

Roxy just smiled. "So. Have I proven my seriousness in doing business with you gentlemen, or did I just shoot an old friend for no good reason?"

Several of the armsdealers looked thoroughly unnerved now, but the leader just laughed, said something in Afrikaans that Viviane refused to translate ("we need him alive for a bit longer") and then proceeded to set up the trade with her— weapons for cash, both to be traded in twenty-three hours in a separate location – by calling his associate who was from a different cell of the same organisation.

His associate who, (Viviane transmitted,) would not be expecting to be in contact with the

Five hours later, Roxy was sitting in the safe house with her feet up on the coffee table, when Eggsy stumbled in, wearing a leopard print shirt that she seemed to recall seeing on one of the armsdealers.

It didn't do much to cover the fact that he was covered in blood.

"Jesus Eggsy, you look like you crawled out of hell."

Eggsy gave her an unimpressed look.

"You left me in a warehouse with a half-pound of buckshot in my chest and seventeen spooked arms dealers."

"And a knife," Roxy retorted, watching from the couch as he limped across the room to grab himself a cold beer from the fridge. "I made sure you were able to palm my boot-knife." She raised an eyebrow. "Which I'll be wanting back."

The knife in question landed two inches from her right foot and vibrated as it stuck into the coffee table.

"Thank you!" Roxy said, tipping her head backwards over the back of the couch so she could look at Eggsy and smile sweetly.

Eggsy snorted at that, but otherwise didn't respond. He came back from the fridge, and dropped into the couch next to her, beer in one hand, her beer in the other.

Roxy smiled and thanked him.

They sat for a while in silence, listening to the sounds of the city at night.

"I know why you had to shoot me," Eggsy says after a while, "but why did you have to go and shoot me the second time?"

"It's therapeutic," Roxy said. "Do you have _any_ idea how long it took me to stop having nightmares about that first time?"

Eggsy grimaced sheepishly. "Yeah alright. I've only apologised, what, _constantly_ over the last four years over that one."

Roxy shrugged, and took a sip of her beer.

There was another comfortable silence, as Eggsy ignored the pain of fragments of buckshot working their way out of their chest, and Roxy ignored the bouquet of sweat, exertion, cordite and viscera that was emanating from Eggsy.

"So," she said, "I noticed that you somehow managed to keep your glasses intact."

Eggsy shrugged, but smirked a little.

"Soooo," Roxy drawled. "On a scale of one to Budapest, how big a shit-show was it when you 'rose from the dead'," she made finger quotes, "and then started to fuck them up?"

Eggsy grinned. "I'll trade you a sneak peak of the footage in exchange for the location of where Merlin's hidden the 12 year old single malt on base."

"Hmmm, I don't know…" Roxy stretched, smug as a cat.

"And," Eggsy continued, unperturbed, "when Harry inevitably wants to see the footage, I'll distract him until you're a continent away."

Roxy winced.

Eggsy smirked.

Roxy caved.

"Done."


End file.
